Chapter 27 – Page 9

Discussion (46) ¬

These transitions are a little jarring, though. In book form, probably more than online, skipping between story-lines two pages at a time without transitions is going to be awkward. Less so when you read in a page-a-weekday-dynamic.

The rapid tone shifts do cause some amount of mood-whiplash. There’s definitely some contrast being drawn here, with these pages being fairly off color. Arkerran pages certainly look to be of an entirely different hue next to these. They’re not exactly as simple as black and white, but they’re not exactly vibrant either. It feels like they’ve got darker undertones, but they’re of a different tint anyway. Some might not appreciate the single tone of the real world narrative and its darkening shades of grey do get a bit dull, but I can appreciate it next to the more saturated fantasy storyline. The value of the story’s overall suspense does feel a bit blurred by the switching, but that might just be due to the wait of serial reading. I suppose we’ll see its true colors soon enough.

This kind of transition is actually a pretty common story-telling technique, enough that readers tend to get annoyed when it’s not used. Generally, when a book starts developing multiple story-lines, the author(s) tend to shift between the story lines. As all the story-lines build closer to a climax (and, as in all things, simultaneous progression is better), the shifts between stories and character perspectives become faster. This does several things. Firstly, it helps build the sense of dramatic tension because you get tantalising snippets without quite concluding the action. Secondly, it means that readers don’t get stuck with one story while constantly thinking ‘but what’s happening to everyone else?’

You’ll see this done in books (any decent fantasy apart from Tolkien, which is notorious for pacing problems), films (see any battle scene), TV shows, and quite a lot of other things. It works well, and I’ve quite liked it, here.

Very true and I recognize that it’s a primary bit of color in a lot of stories with multiple plot threads. The only problem I might have with it is that the monochrome nature of the real world seems a very narrow field next to the cast of Arkerra’s palette. The vibrant variety of game events in the foreground make a questionable composition with the stark single tone of the panic tinged “real world” in the background. I find the contrast intensifies the suspense though and paints an interesting picture nonetheless. I just acknowledge that the growing significance makes the ambiguous figure of the two-dimensional story a bit different, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. Different strokes for different folks I suppose, though I am quite enjoying the story so far regardless.

It strikes me that the protagonists in Arkerra are genuinely trying to establish peace and harmony within that world — in contrast to typical player avatar behavior, in which you’re deliberately looking for fights.

Peace is boring. Conflict brings suffering. Remove consequences from conflict and you have excitement and fun.

Besides, in what you describe, “establishing peace and harmony” is not mutually exclusive with “deliberately looking for fights”. Contradictory, hypocritical or inconsistent as it may be, keeping the peace more often than not needs resorting to force.

Unless all five were reported as last seen at the convention I don’t see how she could connect those five to the convention and exclude the other 2300 Americans reported missing every day. It was already a leap to see Shanna somehow gain an interest in the one employee that was murdered, in a successful high tech company that must have thousands of employees.

The very first page introducing Shanna had her investigating the missing five. Of note is the fact that five players had won a very high-profile contest, and shortly thereafter five con-goers disappeared. Not a difficult connection to make especially if you’re looking for a story.

As for Ferris, there was no leap. He was the person Shanna spoke to the last time she tried to sneak into Hurricane. The fact that Carol stonewalled her last time is no reason for Shanna to lose interest in him now.

But how many of those 2300 are still missing two months and change later? I would think by then in most cases they’ve been rescued/found in a shallow grave by a hiker/got back from marrying a stripper in Vegas/etc.

I suspect it’s only a matter of time until Carol’s defensiveness breaks down. We’ve seen that ever since Ferris’s murder–to an extent, ever since the first signs of H.R. crossing the line from creative obsession into madness–there have been cracks in her unquestioning loyalty. My sense is that Carol and Shanna will end up working together, not as adversaries, to get to the bottom of all this.

Uh huh yep uh huh. Carol and Shanna. Shanna and Carol. What ever happened to the the floating brown boy, Ashok, from evil cultville con(the Order of Infinite Limbs) that high priest Bro Tooooom sent flying to where? Sepia World? Is that what is got into HR these days? Poker face this Shanna! Yous guys think that there is an ending for this story where the 5 gamers get unplugged and Arkerra story is finished for good?

Shanna might be bluffing here, by the by. For example, if Shanna knows that Carol is lying {or is, at least, convinced}, and leads her to think that it’s a visible cue that gave her out, then Carol is that much more likely to try and consciously suppress her perceived impulse to speak in a higher voice, essentially compensating for nothing.

I.e. by falsely calling out a nonexistent “tell”, she might be creating a real one, which would serve her purposes quite well.

I’m reminded of Martin Schenk (seasoned investigator) from season 2 of Luther, he gets someone to confess by pointing out some “tell” the guy had with how he used a pen or something, and when later asked about it he just laughed and said he’s been using that line for 10 years to get people to confess.

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